


Seasons/Shift/Change

by ectoBisexual



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, Codependency, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, F/F, Kissing, Light Bondage, Loooots of kissing, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Praise Kink, Temperature Play, This was purely self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 11:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectoBisexual/pseuds/ectoBisexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are a continuation of her gesture, you tell her, like it means more than it does. The poor girl, she's enamoured with you anyway. And just like that, the seasons change, and you find more circumstances to think that she's the cascade of your mind's finest struggles. </p><p>Kanaya Maryam is a reflection of some of the best and worst parts of you, and it doesn't help that you're in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons/Shift/Change

Your love, specifically for Kanaya Maryam, could be figured, if it wasn't such an ineffable series of calculations that neither of you has ever been able to fathom. She pulls in, out, like the tide, and her ocean is always there. Right in your heart, the dusty caverns you swore would never see the light of day.

You like to think that you and Kanaya are Time And Erosion Against All Odds. Your exogenic processes are the way she holds you, trembling, when you wake up from a nightmare; the way she kisses, hot and filthy and like a fire, all encompassing and desperate to grow; the way you hold her hand and look into her eyes with that idyllic morning feeling growing slow and chalky in your bones and say, "Darling, I could not grasp a life without you here."

You crash, you break, you dissolve each other, and then over time, you erode. You abrade each other; you watch on as the words, thick with poison, spill from your mouth to consume Kanaya in this way that places this lovely, detached look in her eye; she watches on as every part of her, every genuine, solid part, disintergrates the part of you that still wishes it were dead. And yet, despite all odds, well. Here you both are.

You leave once, but only to visit your brother; you and Kanaya both smile politely and exchange the epitome of a chaste goodbye as you approach the terminal, but at the gate she holds your hand so tightly that it hurts. You say, "Are you sure you're alright with this? I know it's only overnight, but I don't have to go. Dave would understand."

Kanaya shakes her head fiercely; that's what you've always loved about her, that ferocious determination. "No, you should go," she tells you, "you are going to miss your flight if you stand here fussing over me all day."

"Funny," you say, and move in so close that you can feel the intake of her breath take the life from yours. "Normally that would be something I would have to say to you." And you kiss her, all teeth and tongue and glorious crudeness; the way she melts in your resolve, the tiny noise she makes when normally it would be you keening in her arms; it makes you queasy, makes your stomach churn longingly with a homesickness that shouldn't even be present yet; you think, No, no, that's wrong, Kanaya is your home and any distance from that is only right to make you lonely. You're no genius in the field of psychiatry ( _yet,_ you're in school for a reason) but even you know codependency when you see it, however slight. It doesn't make you any less inclined to kiss the living daylights out of your girlfriend.

The flight is the worst, because all you can think about is how her face looked, a fractured reflection, a mirror that's been shattered on marble floors. In her, you see yourself; you see your earliest days of youth, cynical but in this vaguely optimistic way, snarky and confident and without a damn near care in the world. You see that, and you see pieces of how you are now, broken and timid and very slow in your progress. Before Sburb, most of you were whole, anyway.

You don't hate Kanaya for this. God, no, you don't hate her. You're really not too sure what hating her would feel like, but you imagine that to understand its concept you would have to travel through a black hole and back again because dear God, dear Lord, you are so completely taken with this woman that it even surprises you sometimes.

Dave is quintessential these days. He lets you into his apartment with the classic "hey, hi, how are you", offers you a drink, shuts the door behind you, which would have made you jump normally, but like you said. You're making progress. Dave is a jittery character nowadays, still intent on his cool guy facade but now more often than not with the broken, charred 'what are you gonna do' kind of smile that suggests he's accepted the fact that he's never going to be the same. Seeing yourself die a million times over would do that to a guy, you suppose.

Karkat is much the same. He's the glue that holds you all together, really, the puzzle piece that always fits right before any of the others. If you had to pick something out in him, it would perhaps be that he's a little bit quieter; just a little bit. He's still his shouty, over-emotional self, and it doesn't help that he and Dave are clearly head over heels for each other. When they aren't making goo-goo eyes and telling each other how much they despise the movie taste of the other, they are no doubt wrapped in the cape that Dave swears he threw out, kissing invisible scars and telling each other they'll get through this, somehow.

You allow your pseudo-sibling to pour you a drink- "Brandy, please, I'm thinking I'd like to get absolutely sloshed before we even begin to talk about your emotional problems as of late"- and humour him for a while so to let he and his matesprit talk you through in excrutiating detail the progress they've made in the past three months since you'd seen them in person. You guess you're sort of their unofficial therapist. You'd recommend they hire a professional, if not for the knowledge that no professional would allow them to talk about aliens and killer dogs and cherubs with serious anger issues without first wanting to lock them up in a psych ward. To the world outside, what's left of your group is crazy. To your group, normal is being able to successfully get out of bed in the morning without breaking down.

You never beat the game, you just cheated your way out of it. That's what it feels like, anyway; Jade tells you all the time that the specifics of this aren't exact. You didn't _cheat,_ per say, you just didn't exactly win on fair terms. It's a miracle, you think, that you were blessed with various teammates and acquaintances who knew what they were doing when it came to coding or prototyping, because just as things were honest to God looking more grim than you could handle, there was the chance of a Reset. Back to the start, post game, with alterations made so that you would remember the game and not make the mistake of playing again. All of you. Save the planet. Lose the love of your life.

It's a particularly hard thing, being told to choose between the lives of all of your friends and the existence of the best relationship you've ever had, but you think Kanaya would have been upset with you had you chosen her over your own safety, so you reluctantly chose to reset the game. After all, it was a vote; no one was about to go destroy the lives of those around them without first consulting their fellow players. Then, another light at the end of the tunnel: the chance to prototype certain players into the opposite species, sending them to their opposite universes. Why would anyone want to do this? Well, love, of course.

Your darling Kanaya, Karkat, and Aradia were the only ones to make the decision, and none of you have heard from Aradia since the game reset.

Normally, these sessions where you fly out to see Dave and Karkat end with one or both of them crying and blubbering over the fact that yes, it still hurts, yes, they still miss everyone terribly, and no, they are not okay. You don't normally get drunk, though; this sets a new pace at the dining table, an impish mood to the way you answer their questions, like you don't really care. (They know you do, they know you're hurting.) They've been better lately. Dave picked up a sword for the first time in almost a year, Karkat is sleeping more. You say, "Good, great, I don't suppose either'a you knows nothing about the irrevocable fear of turning into your dead mother, do you?" And then you giggle, because honestly, how rude. You  _hate_ when people present their problems like that, nonchalant and demanding attention. You laugh harder. Dave puts his hand over yours.

"Rose," he says, but you suspect he means  _Jesus Christ,_   ** _Stop_.**  

"Rose," Karkat echoes, though his is less scared and more sincere. "Talk to us about this."

Choking on your own tears, you do.

You tell them about the nightmares that won't stop, the crippling fear every morning when you wake up that you won't make it through the day, the haphazard trips to the shops that always end in you nearly assaulting someone on instinct of self defense. Your relationship with Kanaya; oh, how you love her so, so much, but how you also kind of wish you still had the capacity to do this on your own. She is your anchor, and you are hers, and this is not good considering neither of you are solid. You've done so much, you say, and yet your life is shallow, meaningless, one line of a song on repeat. Kanaya is the only thing that makes anything exciting anymore, the only reason you have for taking one breath after the other. She is all of the truths of your existence, collectively, expanding beyond themselves. She is acute loneliness and terrible heartbreak and the cure for both.

When you wake up the next morning, you've a pounding headache and you're on the most comfortable couch known to man, directly facing a small television playing reruns of Will & Grace. You emerge from your pit to find sanctuary in the kitchen, in the form of the espresso coffee machine you are suddenly so glad Karkat bothered to talk Dave into buying. You make yourself a triple. It stings the palate of your tongue to drink with too much hot milk and not enough foam.

When you're feeling up to it, and by up to it you mean dosed up on painkillers and gatorade, you kiss your painstaking brother's cheek and make for the airport, already counting the exact minutes until you'll be able to feel the pads of her fingers against your own.

When you meet her at the airport back in nyc, it's a little anticlimatic. She may be absolutely filthy in the bedroom, but your Kanaya is anything if not a lady; meticulous, sure, you could use that word, but you've always prefered  _lady._ She pecks your cheek and gives you a smile and offers to take your bags, to which you decline. You try not to look disappointed that she didn't fly into your arms and take you right there, until, walking back to the parking lot, she leans into your ear and murmurs in a low, clear voice, "When we get home, you are to go straight to our bedroom, no questions, and wait for me there."

You tingle all over just at the tone of her voice.

When you get home, you do just as she said to, because you are a good girl. That's what she loves you for, right? That's why she does this for you, why she goes to all the trouble of planning. You're good for her.

You sit on the bed, right in the centre of the foot, humming to yourself as you think, yes, _we've even had sex here, right at the foot of the bed._ She only makes you wait seven and a half minutes before she grants you mercy and comes in with all the grace of a trail of incense smoke, lovely and filmy and a suggestion of something burning. She smells of sandalwood; of fire and musk and  _Kanaya,_ feral and dangerous, wanting. She comes over to you and starts tying your hands to the headboard.

 

 

" _Ah,_ " it's not a mewl, exactly; she fixes the candle over the sensitive skin of your waist, drip, drip; _there's_ her mewl, long and high and drawn out. "More?" she asks you, amused in that analytical way of hers.

You nod, embarrassed; wishing you could cover your face, you settle instead for bending your elbows in towards your centre, hiding in the crook of your arm while she drips wax on you. Every sting of heat is complimented with a precise, delicate lick just shy of your clitoris; " _Ahh,_ " you warble, and, "Kanaya,  _please._ "

"Is this too hot for you?" she asks, quirking a delicate eyebrow and- oh God, the look in her eyes. The same look that starts storms, floods villages, blows down houses, tears you apart. (You want this, her. You want to be torn apart, just to have an excuse to ask her to piece you back together.)

She gives you a parting lick- " _Oh_ "- and blows out the candle, so that the film of smoke envelops you for a moment, clouds your senses, reminds you of birthdays, ceremonial magick, her her  _her._

You see her reach for the cube of ice that's been slowly melting in the glass of water beside your bed; she brought it in with her when she first appeared for you, clad in that excellently provocative lingerie of hers. Inclining her head towards you, she kisses you, this shapeless gesture aimed right at your core; you shiver, internally, at the tone of the tongue she slides against yours. You're reduced to shaking even before the ice touches your skin.

She brings it across your left hip, first, circling the jutting bone. "Fuck," you swear, embarrassed. She does it again and your hips jerk towards her, "Ah,  _fuck._ " It's cold and wet and runs smooth from being left in water, and you're oversensitive from not being touched, from having your nerves tingle in anticipation for an entire flight back from Houston.

"Shh," she soothes. She's being nice today, or maybe it's just now, and she's going to be become that toxic thing later. Mm, yeah, you're okay with that. "Good girl." She doesn't even mind that you keep swearing.

Kanaya drags the thinning cube of ice along the invisible line between your two hips, gentle as anything, the skin underneath shuddering on its own accord. Then up to your stomach- which dips for her ("so lovely, even your body yields for me, Lalonde")- and back down past your hips to trace the sensitive territory of your inner thighs. She bends her head to lick after the wet trail the ice leaves, hot breath on your leg. She eats your screams up with a practised ferverentness.

 The ice goes up, past the dips and shudders in your abdomen like a valley for her, to tease the sensitive skin around your nipples, pebbling them. Kitten licks, teasing. When you make a noise of complaint, she slaps your hip and fasens her lips to you. 

After a moment of sucking, she seems to reconsider and reaches up to untie you. Your hands fly instinctively to her hair, fingers threading through it erratically as she dips her head back down to lick the ice to its death.

"Please, please, please," you are just starting to say, but shut up with a dazed moan when she abruptly shoves a finger inside of you. There's another one before you're even finished your first noise, and then an even shorter time later there are three. The ice is just cold water now, abandoned and making its way to run down your side, some of it dripping from Kanaya's lovely, delicate chin. Inside of you, she crooks her fingers at their deepest, and something inside of you coils with ret hot heat; you clench around her without even meaning to. You're lucky she apparently finds it endearing, because instead of getting up and leaving you like she's been known to do, she just sucks harder and aims to obliterate that spot inside of you with harsh jabs from her fingers. If she hits it in soft, jittery stabs, you lose all coherency. If she presses it hard like a bruise you've been known to sob into her shoulder. Today she does both, and you try so hard to be good, to not grind down into her palm when you come. 

"Did you, um," she asks, voice gentle, and you break. As soon as it's over for you, whether it be first orgasm or tenth, she always stops, just incase you've reached your level of sensitivity and are about to burst into tears like you do something. Every time, without fail, she drops her act like it was never there in the first place. You reach up and yank her down by the back of her neck to kiss her hard, smiing against her lips, savouring these brief dulcet moments. "Keep going. I want it." She breathes out against your neck, shaky. 

"Please," you add.

Kanaya shoves your hips down into the mattress.

This time when she licks you, it's with the intent of making you come. You do, again, thights trembling; it's always been peculiar to you, how much more intense clitoral stimulation is for you when really it should be the other way around; when you stop seeing white, Kanaya is perched above you, licking her lips.

You love when she makes you go down on her, pulls your hair, calls you her perfect little whore. She points out what a good job you're doing and it makes you flush considerably; you never would have pinned yourself as the type to get off on praise, years back when low level hentai was the most scandalous thing you were into, but here you are.

Here she is.

Kanaya never seems to be able to get off more than once, and you suspect that has something to do with the change in anatomy she's only half used to. Finishing her off only gets you all excited again, but luckily for you she appears to want you badly enough today that she lets you lie on your side facing her and grind yourself to completion on her hand, whimpering into her ear while she whispers filthy things into yours.

" _Fucking_ exquisite," she tells you, and  _fuck_ yes, it's always so hot when she swears like that. "Look at you, so good for me, Rose. I don't even have to do anything; you just need warm flesh to rut against and you can come easy, hm?"  _Yes,_ God yes, you want to say, but you can't, because every time you try moans just spill out; her nails are raking up and down your sides, hard.  _Yes,_ you think to yourself anyway,  _flesh, warm, you. Hot and thrumming alive, so that I don't forget that I am that too._

You guess it's kind of really fucked up that it's  _that_ thought that pushes you over the edge, muffling your scream into the side of her neck, thighs a vice around her hand, eyes squeezed shut until the stars you see dissipate like they always do eventually.

Kanaya is soothing you when you come to, stroking your hair, and just like that, her complexion tilts, and she is your Darling Kanaya again, your dear, sweet beloved. And she is kissing your chin, telling you how good you were. You never seem to realise you've started crying until she's finished wiping all of your tears away, and this time is no different. Sighing lovingly, you bury your head into the nape of her neck. You are so in love you can't stand it.

Afterwards, you always talk. Not even about the sex- you both just like to hear the other's voice, a content low hum of satiation, utter repletion- and for hours on end, until one or both of you falls asleep. Sometimes it's about Sburb. About how you still wake up thinking you'll have to fight for your life again today, how she still lives with the crippling fear that the ghosts of her friends are haunting her. You talk about the future, about how you'll move to the mountains once you're able to function again- no, the ocean- no, the country, you'll raise a family, with a little girl to dress with hairbows and give all the love in your heart. 

You know that it is very unhealthy to ache with the exquisite pain of missing her even when she is right here in your arms, and you know that it is very unhealthy to want to never leave this house again if only to listen to her talk about world affairs, but you can't find it in yourself to care. You can't gather the willpower to want to be on your own anymore. You can't get through this without her hand to hold onto. (Even if you're gripping it so tight that it hurts.)

You are a continuation of her gesture, you tell her, like it means more than it does. The poor girl, she's enamoured with you anyway. And just like that, the seasons change, and you find more circumstances to think that she's the cascade of your mind's finest struggles. You'll be like this always, forever, you know it. Just like this, every day.

And you can't bring yourself to wish for anything else. 

**Author's Note:**

> “I am a continuation of her gesture.” – John Hunter
> 
> “I looked at her face and looked so deeply that I felt I was behind her eyes and all at once I found myself saying, as tears flowed, ‘That’s Me. That’s Me!’ And those simple words brought back many thoughts that I had had before, about the fusion of our souls into one higher-level entity, about the fact that at the core of both our souls lay our identical hopes and dreams for our children, about the notion that those hopes were not separate or distinct hopes but were just one hope, one clear thing that defined us both, that wielded us into a unit, the kind of unit I had but dimly imagined before being married and having children. I realized that though Carol had died, that core piece of her had not died at all, but that it had lived on very determinedly in my brain.” – Douglas Hofstadter, I Am A Strange Loop


End file.
